clientsfromhell:

A client shoots me an email, asking for a quote to record a live music gig and put the footage together with mastered audio for three of the songs they have on their EP. They need four cameras and operators, someone to mix the recorded audio, and me to piece it all together. I give them a reasonable quote.

They turn me down and instead tell me that they have friends that can do it for a beer. I wish them luck.

Two weeks later, I get a panicked email telling me that all the footage and audio is terrible. They ask for a consult on how to fix it. The audio is unsalvageable (peaking at a dB level in the positive), and the video is poorly framed at best, or missing at worst. They didn’t realise some cameras will only record 20-minute blocks.

They beg me to do something with it, saying money is no object.  I take the footage, apply colour grading and Super-8 filters to make it look like it’s intentionally bad, and add the audio from their EP to the footage. The end result is actually really good and looks like they intended to do it all the time.

I wind up charging them the exact amount I quoted to start with, only without doing most of the work.